1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to closure handling, sorting and feeding apparatus and, more particularly, to apparatus for orienting and feeding large numbers of closures to high speed utilization stations such as cappers.
2. Description of the Prior Art.
High speed sorting devices have been desirable in the closure industry. Typically they involved utilizing the dimensional characteristics of the article to arrange them in an orderly manner so that they can be segregated in a common orientation.
Devices employing rotating starwheels or pinwheels to reorient closures or container caps have been employed in the past. These services, however, are relatively limited in speed. Moreover, some types of caps such as the closure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,033,472 to OBRIST have a fragile tamper-proof band which cannot withstand the force exerted by such mechanical sorters.
In response to the need for sorters which exert less mechanically damaging forces on the closures, devices using air sensors have been developed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,526,310 to TESSMER in which an air sensor detects the orientation of a cap and produces a signal to control an air pulse which reorients improperly positioned caps.
Other devices using non-contact sensing have also been developed which have served their particular purpose well. However, the development of such sorters in the speed ranges required for more recent developments in the newer packaging and application stations has not kept pace.